What's in a name?

 As Mr. Shakespeare had Juliet say in that tragic play, 

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose 

By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Well, that might hold true for roses and your doomed lover’s surname. Thanks family feud! But when it comes to naming a character? I beg to differ. 

Here’s my story.

A couple years ago, I submitted the bones of a story to my publisher who was launching a series based in a small town. We were given a map of the town along with key details about a historic inn which had to feature in our stories. I had my characters, their goals, their wounds, their basic personalities, and their names. I signed a contract and was off to the races. Yippee. 

No, wait. 

Someone else was already using the heroine’s name in their story and they signed a contract first. My heroine’s name would have to change.

Horrors!

Calamity!

Much gnashing of teeth!

How could I give this fully formed woman who baked delicious cupcakes a new name?

What choice did I have?

So … I renamed her and the earth continued to orbit the sun. (Though it still rankles as you can probably tell.)

Now we come to my current book. 

My hero was Stan* from his first breath on the page. I spoke to Stan. I dreamed of Stan. My heroine, Jinny, fell in love with Stan. 

Stan survived the first draft, the self-edits, the cruel-to-be-kind comments from my editor. 

Until I heard from a good friend that her marriage was ending. Her husband, Stan, evidently forgot a wedding vow, the one about being faithful. Stan broke my friend’s heart.

Stan was dead to me.

The Stan in my story? He had to go. The name Stan was forever tainted. Stan would never be a hero. Were I to write a gruesome thriller, Stan would suffer. He’d suffer so much that masters of Medieval torture would avert their gaze and consider switching careers.

I had to find a new name for my hero.

It took some deep thinking and soul searching. I had to forget Stan ever existed. Wipe all molecules of the other Stan from my memory and remove any hint of a connection to the hero of my book. 

And so, Ben was born.

Holy moley, golly gee, it wasn’t easy. 

I’ll be nervous about naming my characters now. Maybe I should borrow from history, or other cultures. Or be inventive. How does Lozamda9 sound?

*name changed to protect my friend’s privacy

Luanna Stewart has been creating adventures for her imaginary friends since childhood. She spends her days writing contemporary romance, romantic suspense, paranormal romance, and historical romance. When not torturing her characters, she’s in her kitchen baking something delicious. She lives in Nova Scotia with her patient husband and five hens.

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How Do I Name Characters in a Book?

By Linda Lovely

I’d say my problem is due to my age, but I’d be lying. I’ve always had a hard time remembering people’s names. I’m introduced and five seconds later, I’m asking myself: “Is his name really Harold?”

When I start reading a book, the same thing happens. It takes a while for me to “know” characters on a first-name basis not to mention their roles in the story. That means I’m not fond of authors who insist on giving their characters similar names. It confuses me.

There are 26 letters in the alphabet, so why on earth would an author choose to name several of the main characters with first names starting with say “D.” Dan…Don…Donna…Deb…Dora…Dennis…and the list goes on. The same is true with last names. Does the author really need to have characters with Webb and Webster as last names? Of course, people writing historical fiction have an excuse but fiction writers do not.

And it’s not just the first letters of a name that can throw me—and other readers. Belatedly, I sympathize with my mother. When I was a teen and dating two young men with similar sounding names, she invariably called Don by the name Ron and vice versa.

So how can an author avoid this pitfall? My solution is a sortable Excel spreadsheet for each book’s cast of characters. Here are the headings for the columns:

First Name…Last Name…Age….Eye Color…Hair Color…Height… Build…Profession…Distinguishing Features…Role in Book.

If I’m creating the spreadsheet for additional books in a series, I have two more column headers “Dead” and “In Jail.” That’s so I don’t suddenly bring a character who died in a prior book back to life or fail to give “jail” as an iron-tight alibi for someone who was sentenced to life with no parole in book two.

The spreadsheet lets me sort characters by first name or last name to see if I’ve accidentally fallen in love with a certain letter while I’m in the process of character introduction. Of course, the spreadsheet also serves as a cheat sheet I can reference—especially in a series—to make certain I don’t give a grown woman an inexplicable change in build or a man a new eye color without any mention of plastic surgery or contact lenses.

I also try to make certain the names I pick are appropriate given a character’s age. A seventy-year-old named Linda is quite believable. A seven-year-old named Linda in a contemporary book would be a fluke. There are dozens of websites you can check for the most popular names given to babies in each year as well as popular names among people who have different cultural heritages from Irish to Japanese.

I also avoid some names for “good” characters because I’ve personally disliked someone by that name. It makes no sense, but, hey, the characters are in my book, I can name them as I please.   

Are there names you love or hate? Does it color your ability to relate to a character?

Linda Lovely is the author of eight published mystery/suspense novels. Her latest book, BAD PICK, is the third book in the humorous cozy Brie Hooker Mystery Series.

I have a confession to make…

And it’s this; sometimes I will name characters after people in my family. I didn't even realize I was doing it until someone who knows me and my family pointed it out to me.

The only one who ever asked to be put in a book is my older brother’s wife.  I made her a secondary character in one of my books. A busy body detective who likes to talk. She likes to talk and ask questions but she’s not a detective and she was thrilled to be in the book.

I did name two characters in a book after two of my nieces. Of course they were much smarter than the characters I named after them and I said so in the dedication.

Anyone who knows me knows I have five brothers. I’m an only girl. Before you ask, whether or not I was spoiled depends on the day of the week or which brother you spoke to.

But I regress. After about five books, I got to wondering if any of them had read my books. I know my father had at least glanced through them. I had sent him copies of a couple of books. One brother told me he read one of my books. He answered enough questions correctly I could tell he wasn't lying. J However that still left four brothers. What to do…

Murder on Dark Fort Isle, was the book I would use to find out. I set the book in the neighborhood where we grew up. I thought they might be curious and read it. So I named three of the male characters after them. Did some nasty things to them. Published the book and waited, I’m still waiting. I know they haven’t read it because for sure one of them would have called me.

You would have thought that would break the habit, I sure did.  I recently published my first mystery, The Pink Lady. I received an email from a cousin asking if I had named the heroine after her mother. If I had it was a totally unconscious decision.

So I guess I hadn't overcome that habit. As long as no one complains then I think it will be all right.

Organizing Unruly Characters

You’re a newcomer to a group. You walk into the room and someone introduces you to half a dozen people. There’s a Mark and a Mike, a Linda and a Lynn. Last names are a blur. Why do they all seem to start with “W” or “C”—Watson, Weaver, Wilson…Clark, Cook, Clancy?

If you’re like me, trying to keep the names of new acquaintances straight isn’t easy. And when the names start with the same letter or sound alike, it’s even worse. That’s why I try to ensure the names of characters in my books—even minor ones—begin with different letters and are as distinctive as possible. To accomplish this, I create a Character Spreadsheet to keep my unruly characters organized. (I’m better at orgranizing characters than I am at organizing myself.) Here’s a sample of the headers in the Character Spreadsheet for the 1938 manuscript I’m currently fine-tuning: First Name ... Last Name ... Role ... Physical Description ... Personality Characteristics. The information I entered for my hero is: First Name-Ed, Last Name-Nelson, Role-Hero, Physical Description-Age 32. Mahogany hair, green eyes, 6', Personality/Characteristics-Loyal. Brave. Lonely. Smart/college educated. (Couldn't figure out how to load the spreadsheet--sorry!)

This spreadsheet can be sorted by First Name or Last Name to make it easy to see if you have a plethora of characters with similar first or last names. I developed this AFTER I had to go back and change character names in a prior book to eliminate problems. While I didn’t have problems with the names of my hero and heroine, I had oodles of duplications with my minor and walk-on characters. It was almost as if I had a part of a tune stuck in my head that prompted me to name characters with the same first letter—Marley, Martha, May, Mike, Myrtle, Myriam. Doing a search-and-replace in Word after the fact is a much bigger pain than entering information into a spreadsheet at the get-go. It certainly helps me pick up on the fact that a beginning letter or sound is on a repeating loop in my brain. Also a global search-and-replace simply isn’t an option if you need to change a name like Ed to Norman or May to Shirley. Try that and you wind up with results like this: “She edited NormanitNorman the manuscript. He May Shirley love her.”

Another advantage of my spreadsheet organization is that I scan down the Physical Description column to see at a glance if I’ve populated my novel with all green-eyed beauties, accidentally creating a “Stepford Wives” effect. It also lets me make sure I don’t indicate a character’s height or hair color one way on page 10 and another way on page 130.

I create a similar Timeline/Chapter spreadsheet to track when and where things happen. I don’t do this in advance, but add the basics for each chapter after I write it. Then, if I change my plot later, I can go to the spreadsheet and find where I need to make changes. The headers on that spreadsheet are: Chapter No ... Pages ... POV ... Date/Time ... Events ... Characters.

As a reader, do similar names annoy/frustrate you? As an author, how do you keep your characters and timelines on the straight and narrow?